Ink Cartridge Recycling is no longer a Black & White choice
That little black box that we associate with airplanes also known as ‘the flight recorder’ is not only the thing of movies and crash scene investigatiors. Indeed there are little black boxes that many of you out there will have dealings with on a very regualr basis. It can be part of our daily lives.
Very small, quiet, unassuming and taken for granted by almost everyone that uses them, I am of course talking about the ink carteridge or toner cartridge. The ink cartridge is one of those things that’s always there everytime we go to the printer.
Hugely popular around the world and used in every walk of life, the ink cartridge is now a huge consumable within the office, home office and domestic environment. They can be found in faxes, printers, photo-copiers to name but a few. While they are very useful and important to us as they transform our electronic words into printed words for reading, they also pose a real problem too. What do you do with the empty cartridge.
The answer is usually throw them out…but where?
The most common place is into the nearest bin. This in turn is collected by your friendly binman and eventually the contents end up in landfill somewhere and its here the problem beginns. When you consider that more than 1 billion ink/toner cartridges are used across the world every year, this gives you some idea of how much of a problem exists.
Did you know?
- More than 35 million inkjet cartridges are dumped each year in the Ireland & the UK which equates to almost 2,000 tonnes of waste. Worldwide this figure increases to almost 4,00 million tonnes.
- Only 5% of all empty cartridges are currently being recycled.
- Plastics used in inkjet cartridges can take over 1,000 years to decompose.
- Almost 1 litre of oil is user for every 10 new cartridges produced.
- By recycling cartridges you can make a difference whilst benefitting charities or local organisations too.
- Some where between 20% – 30% of all cartridges sold worldwide are in fact remanufactured.
With an on-going problem like this what can we do. RECYCLE. The message from Governments and Industry leaders is clear, reuse and recycle. So apply this to your used cartridges and help do your bit for the environment and cut down on the amount of new cartridges used every year. So what can you do? Here’s a few suggestions.
Go to a recycling point where they will be inspected, sorted and used for manufacturing new cartridges.
Refill them. Instead of buying a brand new cartridge bring the empty one to your local cartridge store that refills empty cartridges as well as selling recycled/refilled cartridges. This can work out much cheaper that buying new.
Return to the manufacturer. A number of the major manufacturers now have a returns policy in place where you send them your empty cartridges and they will use them again in the manufacture of new cartridges.
Send to a charity. Many eneterprising charities will collect and recycle used cartridges as means of raising much needed funds. Most of the well known and established charitities have recycling projects in place. Check out Temple Street Childrens Hospital as an example.
School projects. There are some large retail chains that run promotions where they collect used cartridges from schools aroud the country. In return for the empty cartridges they issue the school with special vouchers that can be redeemed against computer equipment for that school once they have collected a certain amount of the vouchers. This is a great way to get the whole school and the community involved inthe project. Check out Tesco for an example of this type of project.
So once all these used cartridges are collected and sent off for recycling, what actually happens to the? What is the benefit of recycling the?
By recycling printer cartridges, we conserve natural resources and energy by reducing the need for virgin materials. Up to 97 percent of the materials that make up a printer cartridge can be recycled or reused if taken care of. Printer cartridges can in extreme cases be refilled up to 15 times before reaching the end of their life most though averaging between 5-7 refills.
Once toner cartridges are received at the recycling site, they are sorted according to model before being disassembled. It is at this point that reusable parts are cleaned and recovered. After cleaning, reusable parts go through a rigorous inspection process that employs the same strict quality standards applied to new parts. Parts reused in a new toner cartridge are the charging roller, sleeve and magnetic roller.
Once recycled the cartridges can be used to make a number of other non print related products such as roof tiles for houses etc.
Refilled/recycled cartridges are cheaper to buy and kinder to the environment. On the subject of cost, it’s incredible to think that Inkjet Ink is probably the most expensive liquid by volume you will ever buy? It’s actually more expensive than Champagne, Perfume, Oil and even Gold!
So in summary, there’s a lot more to that little black box that you might have originally thought and just because its empty doesnt mean that its useful life is over. With numerous ways to recycle used cartridges each with a different benefit or beneficiary, what you must do in future is to think carefully as to what to do with your empties and who can you help by making a wise choice. Buy Ink Cartridges
Tags: ink cartridges, ireland, printer cartridges, printer inks, toner cartridges, toners